[Footnote 1: They are referred to at the end of the book. Comp. I Macc. xvi. 23f.]
[Footnote 2: Kiddushin, 66a.]
In Palestine, however, the historical spirit did not flourish for long. The interest in the universal lesson prevailed over that in the particular fact, and the tradition that was treasured was not of political events but of ethical and legal teachings. Moral rather than objective truth was the study of the schools, and when contemporary events are described, it is in a poetical, rhapsodical form, such as we find in the Psalms of Solomon, which recount Pompey's invasion of Jerusalem.[1] The only historical records that appear to have been regularly kept are the lists of the priests and their genealogy, and a calendar of fasts and of days on which fasting was prohibited because of some happy event to be commemorated.
[Footnote 1: See above, p. 14.]
In the Diaspora, on the other hand, and especially at Alexandria, which was the center of Hellenistic Jewry, history was made to serve a practical purpose. It was a weapon in the struggle the Jews were continually waging against their detractors, as well as in their missionary efforts to spread their religion. It became consciously and essentially apologetic, the end being persuasion rather than truth. Fact and fiction were inextricably combined, and the difference between them neglected.
The story of the translation of the Septuagint by the Jewish sages sent to Alexandria at the invitation of King Ptolemy, which is recounted in the Letter of Aristeas, is an excellent example of this kind of history. It is decked out with digressions about the topography of Jerusalem and the architecture of the Temple, and an imaginative display of Jewish wit and wisdom at a royal symposium. The Third Book of the Maccabees, which professes to describe a persecution of the Jews in Egypt under one of the Ptolemies, is another early example of didactic fiction that has been preserved to us. The one sober historical work produced by a Jewish writer between the composition of the two Books of the Maccabees and of the Wars of Josephus was the account given by Philo of Alexandria of the Jewish persecutions that took place in the reigns of Tiberius and Gaius. It was originally contained in five books, of which only the second and third have been preserved. They deal respectively with the riots at Alexandria that took place when Flaccus was governor, and with the Jewish embassy to Gaius when that Emperor issued his order that his image should be set up in the Temple at Jerusalem and in the great synagogue of Alexandria. Philo wrote a full account of the events in which he himself had been called upon to play a part. He is always at pains to point the moral and enforce the lesson, but his work has a definite historical value, and contains many valuable details about Jewish life in the Diaspora.
But if the Jews were somewhat careless of the exact record of their history, many of the Greek and Roman historians paid attention to it, some specifically for the purpose of attacking them, others incidentally in the course of their comprehensive works. The fashion of universal history continued for some centuries, and works of fifty volumes and over were more the rule than the exception. These "elephantine books" were rendered possible because it was the fashion for each succeeding historian to compile the results of his predecessor's labors, and adopt it as part of his own monumental work. Distinguished among this school of writers were Apollodorus of Athens, who in 150 B.C.E. wrote Chronicles containing the most important events of general history down to his own time, and Polybius, who was brought as a prisoner from Greece to Rome in 145 B.C.E., and in his exile wrote a history of the rise of the Roman Republic, in the course of which he dealt with the early Jewish relations with Rome. Then, in the first century, there flourished Posidonius of Apamea (90-50 B.C.E.), a Stoic and a bitter enemy of the Jews, who continued the work of Polybius down to the year 90, and, besides, wrote a separate diatribe against Judaism, which he regarded as a misanthropic atheism. The succession was carried on by Timagenes of Alexandria, who wrote a very full history of the second and the first part of the first century.
Among Roman writers of the period that dealt with general affairs were Asinius Pollio, the friend of Herod, and Titus Livius, who, under the name of Livy, has become the standard Latin historian for schoolboys. Josephus refers to both of them as well as to Timagenes, Posidonius, and Polybius; but as there is no reason to think that he ever tried to master the earlier authorities, it is probable that he knew them only so far as they were reproduced in his immediate sources and his immediate predecessors. The two writers whom he quotes repeatedly and must have studied are Strabo of Amasea (in Pontus) and Nicholas of Damascus. Strabo was an author of remarkable versatility and industry. Besides his geography, the standard work of ancient times on the subject, he wrote in forty-seven books a large historical work on the period between 150 (where Polybius ended) and 30 B.C.E. Nearly the whole of it has disappeared, but we can tell from Josephus' excerpts that he appreciated the Jews and their religion as did few other pagans of the time. He dealt, too, at considerable length with the wars of the Hasmonean kings against the Seleucids, and he is one of the authorities cited by Josephus for the period between the accession of John Hyrcanus and the overthrow of Antigonus II by Herod. The Jewish historian follows still more closely, and in many places probably reproduces, Nicholas, who was the court historian of Herod. Nicholas was a man of remarkable versatility. He played many parts at Herod's court, as diplomatist, advocate, and minister. He was a poet and philosopher of some repute, and he wrote a general history in forty-four books. In the first eight books he dealt with the early annals of the Assyrians, the Greeks, the Medes, and the Persians. Josephus, who took him for his chief guide after the Bible, often reproduces from him comparative passages to the Scripture story which he is paraphrasing. And for the later period of the Antiquities, from the time of Antiochus the Great (ab. 200 B.C.E.), he depends on him largely for the comparative Hellenistic history, which he brings into relation with the story of the Hasmoneans. When he comes to the epoch of Herod, the disproportionate fulness, the vivacity, and the dramatic power of the narrative in books XIV-XVI of the Antiquities are due in a large measure to the historical virtues of the court chronicler. We can tell how far this is the case by the immediate and marked deterioration of the narrative when Josephus proceeds to the reigns of Archelaus and Agrippa—where Nicholas failed him.
Among Roman writers of his own day whom Josephus used was the Emperor Vespasian himself, who, to record his exploits, wrote Commentaries on the Jewish War, which were placed at his client's disposal.[1] In the competition of flattery that greeted the new Flavian dynasty, various Roman writers described and celebrated the Jewish campaigns.[2] Among them were Antonius Julianus, who was on the staff of Vespasian and Titus throughout the war, and at the end of it was appointed procurator of Judea; Valerius Flaccus, who burst into ecstatic hexameters over the burning of the Temple; and Tacitus, the most brilliant of all Latin historians. Besides these writers' works, which have come down to us more or less complete, a number of memoirs and histories of the war appeared, some by those who wrote on hearsay, others by men who had taken some part in the campaigns. It was an age of literary dilettantism, when nearly everybody wrote books who knew how to write; and in the drab monotony of Roman supremacy, the triumph over the Jews, which had placed the Flavian house on the throne, was a happy opportunity for ambitious authors.
[Footnote 1: Vita, 68.]